The implementation of the International Health Regulation (IHR) of WHO in 2005 for world-wide public health systems is already in its second extension phase. At the 2012 deadline only 16% of the countries were fully prepared to detect and respond to pandemics. In 2014 the Ebola Virus Disease outbreak in West Africa was another indicator that WHO’s IHR has to be taken seriously. Especially the biosecurity part of IHR is not fully in place yet for most developing countries, which makes the world vulnerable for bioterrorism.

The returns from investing in public healthcare are extremely impressive and is not a high risk venture as with a rapid mortality decline many ‘value life years’ (VLYs) are gained. For low- and middle-income countries typically about a quarter of the growth in full income resulted from VLYs gained and supports not only the local economy but also the world economy, stability and safety.

Therefor several international programs help to prepare low- and middle-income countries to mitigate outbreaks of infectious diseases. EU CBRN CoE initiatives and the US CBEP, DTRA, CTR, GEIS, DIMO, USAID, PEPFAR and several other programs are involved in establishing public health systems and give local healthcare workers trainings in both disease outbreak mitigation and biosecurity.

Presentation CBRN Workshop

CBRN Information Exchange and Sharing among Civ-Mil Responders

Sharing security threat information is a challenge for governments and their agencies. Especially in biotechnology and microbiology the agencies do not know how to classify or to disclose collected information on potential CBRN-threats. There is vague border between man-made and natural chemical and/or biological threats. Also publications of details from chemical or biological research, which could be misused by malicious individuals, gets more attention of the security agencies. Examples are in toxin production and in studies in which highly contagious diseases are mutated to see the how the route of infection can be changed. Recently was show that only a small number of mutations were necessary to change the H5N1 virus so that it can spread through the respiratory system between mammals. This implies a risk on a H5N1 pandemic and these kind of experiments are now banned in the USA although this information can be used to develop new therapies and/or vaccines for influenza.

1999 – Thesis with University of Tokyo, Institute of Medical Sciences, on ’The production and use of platelet micro-vesicles for bleeding control’ under Prof. dr. T. Takahshi, University of Tokyo, Japan

Professional Experience:

Strategic and creative consultant in biomedical science, with a parallel career as a Commander of the reserve of the Royal Dutch Navy. For the Dutch Armed Forces, he has responsibility for the counter measures in CBNRe threats and (medical) consequence management both in a military and a civilian (terrorism) setting. He is strategic functional specialist for “Health & Environment” of the 1-Civil-Military-Interaction Command (1-CMI) of the Dutch Armed Forces and for 2015 also in the NATO Response Force (NRF).

He was the director of the 2014 and 2016 World Congress of CBRNe Science & Consequence Management in Tbilisi, Georgia.

In his civil career he works international as a scientific supervisory board member for several medical and biotech companies, merely involved in biodefense. He is visiting professor for the Rhein-Waal University in Germany. For Expertise France, a French governmental institute, he is Key Expert for Medical CBRN and manages now a project in West Africa to support local public health systems to make the EU CBRN Center of Excellence partner countries more prepared for outbreaks of highly contagious diseases.